Page 78 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

Wistala saw a smaller version of the stool the elf sat on as he played. She ambled over to the seat, thinking she saw a cat-size creature sitting there, but she realized it was only a bit of craft bearing hair and painted-on eyes. She sniffed at the rather dirty thing—it smelled of elf, but differently from her host.

“How this played?” she asked, not seeing strings or blowholes in its design.

At this, the elf stood. “I . . . you . . .” He fled from the room, leaving Wistala to sniff and wonder.

The gray-white horse was another puzzle, for he did no work. Wistala knew little about the doings of the hominid world, but in the home cave she’d heard stories enough about horses—usually while dining over a piece of one—to know that hominids had them pull or carry or bear them.

Indeed, he appeared to own Rainfall rather than the reverse, for the elf labored long in keeping his berth clean and the horse properly brushed.

Wistala, while exploring the stable one morning in pursuit of mice, came close to his stall. The horse snorted and reared and kicked. His simple beast-speech was easy enough to understand. “Away! Stomp you! Kick you!”

“You mistake me for a dragon. I’m but a hatchling.”

It occurred to her that she was no longer fresh out of the egg; she’d survived aboveground and breathed her first fire. I’m a drakka!

The horse seemed in no mood to make zoological distinctions. He danced in his stall. “Away! Beast! Sharptooth! Away!”

Wistala left him stomping and raging and hopped out the window. She examined the roof and felt up to a climb, using a wide-bellied wheeled contraption—cart, she corrected herself—to gain the roof. She sniffed at the clay-lined holes that guided the rain to the central cistern and gained the peak.

From here, even with some of the treetops, she could see more of the lane leading west away from the hill house and barn. She saw stone walls disappearing into overgrown fields, and a few roofless constructs at the base of two massive, partially bald hills to the north.

She could see nothing of other hominid habitation, unless the ruined houses counted, but she doubted elves, men, or dwarves would live in homes with shrubs growing in the doorways and young trees poking through the roof. The only breathing creatures who seemed to be thriving in the vicinity were the goats.

“Rah-ya! Rah-ya! Rah-ya!” came a joyous cry. The sound traveled from window to chimney to door of the house. Rainfall danced out the door and into the overgrown yard separating home from barn, dressed only in a cross-tied wrap of thin white material. He let out a whoop and ran to the weed-choked pool surrounding a statue of three figures.

Rainfall tipped, plunged his head into the water, looking just like a duck on a dive, save for the long kicking legs.

Wistala couldn’t imagine the causes and consequences of such action, so she jumped down from the roof. The impact pained her, but only a little.

By the time she crossed the courtyard, he was head-side-up again.

“Rah-ya, Tala! Rah-ya!” Rainfall said. He pointed to his head.

At his temples a pair of fuzzy growths, like clover heads, hung rather limply from the rest of the lichen growth, and she detected a few patches of fuzz. “See? See?”

“I see—yes. I understand—no.”

“You wouldn’t, would you?” Rainfall said. “I’ve been . . . down. Ill. Wounded.”

Wistala saw no scars. “Wounded?”

“Not as you think. I’m old, but still a long way from my final haspadalanesh—age.”

“The . . . greenstuff . . . means healing?”

“Yes. Means healing. Thanks to you.”

Wistala couldn’t imagine what she’d done. He’d stuffed her with hearty kid stews, swabbed her wounds. How would that improve his health?

“You know a little of our language, but nothing of our souls,” Rainfall said. “In time . . .”

“In time . . . ,” Wistala repeated.

“Very good.”

Time passed, and it was very good.

The elf presented her with books, and she began to learn to read by associating sounds with the simple illustrations within.

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